


every cowboy sings a sad, sad song

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 13:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cary isn't one to run. He isn't one to stay, really, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every cowboy sings a sad, sad song

**Author's Note:**

> Post episode fic for 3x08 "Death Row Trip."

Cary isn't one to run.

He isn't one to stay, really, either.

He's never wanted to, that's probably why. Because the truth is, he usually gets what he wants, and when he's done with it, he tosses it aside.

(That's why almost a year and a half later, it still pisses him off, about losing Lockhart Gardner to Alicia.)

Kalinda had always been that _thing_ he's never gotten. (Though to reduce her to a thing would definitely get him nailed in the groin, if she knew his train of thought.) He never knows where she's coming from or what she wants until somehow she's already extracted it from him. She says things like, _Why does everyone always think I want something?_ and manages to sound surprised that he–that _anyone_ –views her that way.

She looks at him and ties him in knots and makes him want things he's never wanted before, makes him know if he doesn't run, he'll wish he had at some point. She forgets that he knows about Alicia and Peter, and it's not like he's so full of ethics he's never fucked a married woman (but, like Kalinda at the time, that man had no face, no entity, he'd just been the one there before him and after, and it hadn't meant anything). He hates that he understands, but he also saw her face, saw the shame she is capable of feeling, saw that Kalinda Sharma like everyone else, really is human.

That's what it is as he presses his lips to hers, and then she presses hers to his – _what are we doing?_ –it means something; it does. But what it means to him, he's certain is entirely different than what it means to her. Sexual bargaining is her way of life, trading a favor for a good time is currency she understands. She might have thanked him for protecting her, but she didn't know how his heart had nearly beat out of his chest, not just in fear, but in fear for _her_ , for the casual way they always exchanged everything, for the fucking inadequacy of it all.

For him to only think of her, no matter who else he had in his bed, or across his lap in his car–for him to watch her exude all the same tactics on the woman he was currently fucking that she used on him, it was too much. He can't stop himself from calling her on it, and then she acts like he's paranoid, like he's imagined it all. (The jealousy churns in the pit of his stomach, Kalinda with anyone, with _everyone_ , but him.)

He looks into her face, her inscrutable, unknowable mind behind eyes that show desire (for him? that's the worst part, that even now, standing this close to her, he still doesn't know _for sure_ ), and he feels it swell inside him again–not just the hard-on in his trousers, but the _feeling_ in his chest, the one that terrifies him, that hasn't ever been broached before, that somehow belongs only to Kalinda.

Who he doesn't know at all. Who might fuck him against a wall and wipe her lipstick on his collar and saunter away in her black boots with something he'll never get back.

So he does it, instead. He walks out, leaves her alone in the office he worked his ass off to get. No matter how many times she might have outsmarted him, or smirked at him from behind the gate in the courtroom, he _earned_ it, goddammit, and he's fucking leaving her there. Just wondering, maybe _hoping_ , he'll come back.

He still feels like the one holding less cards though; it's just Kalinda's way. She can't let him win any of it, ever.

She'd say she's not even playing a game, but Cary knows what it is to be played. A player knows the strategy too well not to recognize it.

 

 

He drinks a couple beers once he's home, wishes for something stronger, but just falls into bed, his tie and dress shirt on the floor. His undershirt smells slightly sweaty and his pants are dirty, a hole in the knee where he'd hit the pavement. He leaves them on, both a reminder of what happened that he's not ready to lose just yet.

(There is some weird post-traumatic thing going on with him, right now, and he knows it. He almost _died_. He almost died with his arm around Kalinda.)

He's cradling the beer bottle against his chest, the television on, but whatever Jon Stewart's saying isn't really penetrating his brain, and then he hears the doorbell.

It's late, but he has no delusions about who would come knocking on his door at this time of night. It's possible Dana heard about what went down. She's got a scanner in her apartment, after all. But he didn't call her, or text her, he really had just wanted to be alone.

But, if she's there, he might as well take it for what it is, burn off the excess. She'll be up for it, she always is. Plus, she'll be pissed to know they lost their guy. Death isn't justice to her; sentencing is her favorite part of the whole process.

He opens the door, and is actually astonished to see Kalinda. He presses his forehead to the edge of the door and says, "No."

She takes a deep breath and proceeds to say more words than he's ever heard from her that weren't case-related. "I've made mistakes, Cary. But I am who I am, and I'm not going to go apologizing all the time for it. Anything I've ever done to you to get information, to solve a case, to put Lockhart Gardner at an advantage over the State's Attorney's office, _was not personal_. You made it personal because you were so offended that they chose Alicia over you. I'm just doing my job, that's all it's ever been. But you have been my...friend," she grits it outs slowly, as if the very sentiment is too awkward for her to actually embrace. "You have been there when I needed you, you have helped me when my back was to the wall. And that's why I like you. That's why I keep coming back. I lied when I said I have no idea what we're doing. What I don't know, is why we haven't done it yet, and why we're always circling around it."

She takes a step back, as if the expulsion of these words has the power to move her physically. "If you're afraid I'll hurt you, then we have the same fear; because if I lose the only friend I have, I'm not sure..."

And here, it ends. He can see that she has more to say, that something else froths behind her stoic updo hair, leather jacket wrapped tight, boots-made-for-walking persona, but she can't give anymore.

Not tonight, anyway, and maybe never. Maybe this only happened because she realized she too could have gasped her last Chicago-fall laced breath and that would be it for them. Just the steps of the dance, never the execution of it.

He reaches out, his hand still gripping his Amstel Light pathetically tight. He caresses the side of her face with two fingers, the bottle blocking the curve of her jaw from his palm. She takes the beer, gives him a little eyebrow lift that says, _Light beer, really?_ and tips it against her mouth, draining what's left of it.

He can invite her in, and let it happen, or he can touch her face in gentle rejection, tell her he's preserving the friendship she finds so hard to bear.

Cary never was one to run.


End file.
